1960s Radical Drawing Fire to Obama Is a Prominent Thinker on K-12 Education

William C. Ayers, the 1960s radical at the center
of a presidential-campaign controversy over
the extent of his ties with Sen. Barack Obama,
is widely known and respected in education as a
professor, commentator, and advocate for progressive
teaching and social justice.

At the AERA’s annual meeting in New York City
in March, he was a panelist for several sessions,
including one on the topic “The Small Schools
Movement Meets the Ownership Society.”

In a paper on his Web site titled “Conceptions of Teaching,” (Word doc) Mr. Ayers, 63,
writes: “Teachers might
not change the world in
dramatic fashion, but we
certainly change the people
who will change the
world.”

Mr. Ayers and his wife,
Bernardine Dohrn, tried to
bring dramatic change to
the world at one time,
using methods that have
led current political critics
of Mr. Ayers to characterize
him as an “unrepentant
terrorist.” Both Mr.
Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were
members of the group
known as the Weathermen, later the Weather
Underground, which took
a militant approach to opposing
the Vietnam War.

Mr. Ayers has acknowledged
taking part in
Weathermen bombings
carried out at the Pentagon,
the U.S. Capitol, the
Department of State, and
elsewhere. No one was
injured in those bombings,
but three members of the
group were killed in New York City when a bomb
accidentally exploded in 1970. That incident
helped send Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn underground
for more than a decade. After they
emerged, they embarked on academic careers.

Mr.Ayers is a professor in the education school
at the University of Illinois-Chicago, while his
wife teaches law at Northwestern University.
They live in Chicago’s Hyde Park-Kenwood area,
near the University of Chicago, where they met
Mr. Obama, 46, as an up-and-coming politician
who also lives in the neighborhood.

‘Valued’ in Chicago

Sen. Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is battling
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York
for the Democratic presidential nomination, was
asked about his relationship with Mr.Ayers in an
April 16 ABC News debate in Philadelphia.

Sen. Obama described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who
lives in my neighborhood,” but not one whom “I
exchange ideas with on a regular basis.”

The two men served together for a time on a
charitable group’s board, and Mr. Ayers and Ms.
Dohrn reportedly gave a reception for Mr. Obama
in the mid-1990s to help launch his campaign for
the Illinois Senate.

Mr. Ayers and his work have been quoted or
cited in the pages of Education Week over the
years. He was the author of a 1987 Commentary,
for example, and the subject of a 1994 profile.

Mr.Ayers could not be reached for comment for
this story, and he has kept a low profile since the
Philadelphia debate. But on his Web site recently—in response to a growing storm, particularly
among political conservatives, over his past
and his ties to Sen. Obama—he addressed criticisms
that he lacked regret for his actions.

“I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did
to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say ‘no, I
don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the
slaughter of millions of human beings by my own
government,’ ” Mr. Ayers said on April 6. “Sometimes
I add, ‘I don’t think I did enough.’ This is
then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs
and thinks there should be more bombings.”

In Chicago, Mr. Ayers has been an advocate of
small schools and a sometime adviser to Mayor
Richard M. Daley on improving
the city’s school
system. In the wake of
the Philadelphia debate,
Mr. Daley called Mr.
Ayers a “valued member
of the Chicago community.”

“By the time Obama
came to Chicago, Bill and
Bernardine had long since
become fully contributing
and completely respectable
members of the civic community
and pillars of the
Hyde Park community,”
said Adolph L. Reed, a political
science professor at
the University of Pennsylvania,
who once lived in
the Chicago neighborhood
and says he is a friend of
the couple. “What I think
is a subject for concern is
that Obama is vulnerable
to the ... Republican propaganda
machine.”

Sen. John McCain of Arizona,
the presumptive GOP
nominee, has indicated
he is willing to tie Sen.
Obama to Mr.Ayers.

The relationship between the two was “open to
question,” Sen. McCain said on the ABC News
program “This Week” on April 20. “Because if
you’re going to associate and have as a friend
and serve on a board and have a guy kick off
your campaign that says he’s unrepentant, that
he wished [he had] bombed more. … ”

Education Views Criticized

For Sol Stern, a contributing editor of City
Journal, published by the right-leaning Manhattan
Institute in New York City, the current
concern is Mr. Ayers’ espousal of a social-justice
philosophy in education.

“The more pressing issue is not the damage
done by the Weather Underground 40 years
ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the
nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational
movement in which Ayers plays a
leading role today,” Mr. Stern wrote on the journal’s
Web site.

In an interview, Mr. Stern added: “Don’t get
me wrong—I’m not saying his time in the
Weather Underground was harmless, but it
was limited damage. But there is a lot of damage
in this movement for teaching social justice
in the schools. It is based on teaching kids a
left-wing ideology.”

Danny Martin, the chairman of the curriculum
and instruction department at UIC’s education
school, said last week that he had been instructed
not to comment on the controversy.

Vol. 27, Issue 35, Page 23

Published in Print: April 30, 2008, as 1960s Radical Drawing Fire to Obama Is a Prominent Thinker on K-12 Education

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